Let’s start with the juicy rules bits you can drop in your game right away—like the eight pages of new traps in Chapter 2. You also get solid guidelines for creating your own traps, covering everything from getting the numbers right to making sure your trap threatens the characters—not the fun of your game.
Chapter 2 also includes new types of fantastic terrain you can add to your encounters, as well as introducing the concept of "terrain powers"—attack powers built in to an encounter’s environment.
Chapter 4 is about tweaking and adjusting monsters. It rounds out the rules presented in the first 4th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide with additional rules for making minions and refined guidelines for elite and solo monsters. It presents new templates, including class templates for the classes in Player’s Handbook 2, and introduces monster themes—a great way to tweak the flavor and powers of a monster to make it fit whatever kind of adventure you want to run.
You’ll find new artifacts in Chapter 5, including old favorites such as the Rod of Seven Parts and the Cup and Talisman of Al’Akbar (both of which appeared in the original Dungeon Master’s Guide back in 1979) as well as all-new artifacts designed to appeal to pairs or whole groups of characters.
Chapter 5 also sets out a new system of rewards you can use instead of (or as a supplement to) magic items. Divine boons represent gifts from the gods or their agents, legendary boons express the accomplishment of great deeds of power, and grandmaster training reflects what happens when a player character learns from a legendary master.
Near the end of Chapter 1, you’ll find rules for companion characters—a great way to round out a mall party or bring an important NPC along for the ride with your player characters. That chapter also includes handy rules for altering a character on the fly so he or she can fit in with a party of characters of much higher or lower level.
